January 28, 2008

Homework:
Completing the sentence unit 8
Rough draft due Wednesday

Today:
We reviewed the schedule for the week.
Then we watched an episode of "The Wonder Years" where Winnie Cooper gets in an accident. We are currently writing narratives, and the narrator for the show is a great example of the voice their papers should have. The older narrator is commenting throughout on the actions he was doing in the story.
The story is also great because of how it is told. There is a nugget of knowledge the writer shares at the end. The events in the story progress us towards that realization. In fact, the episode was about the accident, yet the reason the writer used that event was to share something he has learned about life with us. He states, "There are things in a life that matter, things in a past which can't be denied."
If he were to just give us this wisdom on a fortune cookie slip, we could read the same words and nod our head to its wisdom. Instead, a good writer is not interested in just telling us the point. He crafts the story to deliver the story with as much impact as possible. That is the result of this episode. It is so touching that I cried 4 out of the 5 times I showed it today. A writer wants his audience to me moved.